


Transition States

by tanarill



Series: Probability Matrices [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, Force Ghosts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jedi, Jedi Knights, Jedi Training, Mysticism, Poetry, Prophecy, Spaceships, Tea, force shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7852696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anakin Naberrie is rather less mortal than he'd like to be, so he's decided to make sure a bunch of his friends stick around for the very long term.</p><p>Galactic civilization, as it is, doesn't stand a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transition States

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a sequel to Fundamental Force Carriers, and will not make sense unless you read that one first. Go ahead. We'll wait.

He'd known something was coming for days - a feeling of malaise that wouldn't leave, despite how well his life was going otherwise. Qui-gon and Solo-the-younger and Winama had finally figured out that they were all unbalanced alone or in pairs and decided to go for an Alderaanian House-marriage. The Senate had caved on the power devolution issue, and were drafting the new Constitution. The question of whether the Naar were a good idea had, as promised, been revisited and then promptly dismissed as stupid. And he still couldn't shake the feeling of something _wrong_.

When it happened, it reached straight through four layers of sleep and seventy layers of shielding to tug, viscerally, at his innards. He woke up gagging, and had two seconds to roll over and pull over the wastebin before he started vomiting. Behind him, Padmé woke up and said, blearily, "Anakin?"

Obi-wan and Witch started questioning him, followed a beat later by the more distant sense of Yoda. They stopped again immediately as they felt his physical state. An instant after that Obi-wan very sensibly put a shield around him, which mitigated the sensation somewhat and in all probability redirected all the questions to him. It did not do a thing about the information flow. "Coma," he gasped, and then went back to vacating his stomach.

Padmé said, "Advance warning is nice," and went to go comm medical to send someone with a stretcher to come get him. By the time she had, his stomach was empty; he was dry-heaving and his eyes were streaming tears. Padmé started rubbing soothing circles on his back.

He took a deep breath, and then another, and then flopped down on his side so if he started doing that again he at least wouldn't choke on it. "Thanks."

"Coma?" asked Padmé.

"Um," he said. "Yeah. That was - much worse than I thought that would be, actually."

"Really?" asked Padmé. "It's been ages."

"Yeah," he said. "A long one. Sorry."

"It's fine," said Padmé, in a tone that suggested it wasn't, and later there was going to be a long talk about what he'd thought would happen, and why he somehow expected it to be less bad than that.

"Don't let them use azumenizol," he said quickly, as Obi-wan's shield began cracking under stress. "This isn't a Dark thing." Then Obi-wan's shield broke, and he was spiralling down into the Force.

 

The Father was dying. This wasn't a new thing. He'd been dying two decades ago, during their first, last, and only face-to-face meeting. He'd been dying four decades ago, when he'd encouraged the Force to respond to Darth Plagueis not with nothing, but rather in the most spiteful way possible. He'd known a replacement was going to necessary soonish.

None of this meant he approved of Anakin. Anakin was much too. Too young, too willful, too unwilling, too wild. Then, later, after the Son had neatly stitched up time, he was all of the above and also too Dark.

(In the time which hadn't happened and now never would, he'd _blocked those memories_ , put them behind a wall. Being fair, he had been trying to reimpose free will on the future the Son had chosen. It might even had worked, if things had been different. As it was the memories had returned when he was, once again, sitting in a lava pit on Mortis.)

Also, the Father still didn't approve of him. The Father would have prefered if he'd stayed and done to Obi-wan and Ahsoka what he'd done to the poor Force-sensitives who had eventually become the Daughter and Son. Somewhere, outside in the physical world where his body was, he tried to vomit again. No. Not ever. That was not the way to a true and lasting balance.

The Father had lasted a shade short of twenty-six thousand years.

The longest-lived of their predecessors had managed eleven million, and the civilization resulting from eleven million years of balanced Force use - of peace - had been capable of building stars. There was no way he'd get anywhere close to that, of course, and didn't want to. His plan was to find out how it had been done, and then learn how to _make_ a Chosen One who could do it. As many Chosen Ones as it took before he got to one who wanted the job, and then he'd hand it directly over to them. He was not going back to Mortis. He needed to be out in the galaxy, living, and not merely existing as the Father had been.

Well. The Father been dying for decades, close to a century now, and hanging on as long as he could. Now he was acutely dying, and would, finally, pass into the Force. He'd lived long enough to see his successor successfully pick up the duty; and however he felt about said successor, it was no longer his decision to make. He just needed to teach about their shared lineage, all the extra information that Anakin wouldn't need to do the job, but would need to do the job well. It would take another few hours to finish transferring that.

Anakin just wished he could have done this by _comming_ , like a rational person. It wasn't like he didn't have a set of comm codes that Anakin would be able to understand meant 'come here now.'

The Father was grimly amused by that. He was holding his physical body together by sheer will, and as soon as this was done he was going to stop doing that, too. He was incapable of using even the most basic comms console.

He'd left it too long, then, thought Anakin.

Perhaps. A little. That was his physical distress that Anakin had been feeling, so possibly he should have done this before it got to that point, but -

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Anakin, and then realized he'd said it out loud.

"Yes?" asked Witch, looking up from her datapad.

"That _asshole_. Just because I don't want to live on a creepy construct planet with only ghosts and whispers for company, I must mean to make him leave. How long was I out?" he added.

"Seventeen hours," said Witch. "Are you going to throw up if I tell you to eat something?"

He considered. "Yes," he said.

"Then I won't," said Witch. "How much longer is this going to take?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Uh-huh. And then you'll explain what it is?"

"Precedent," he said, and closed his eyes. "Don't wake me up. There's a lot, I'm going to need time to integrate it."

Witch sighed, and then said, "What should I tell everyone?"

"I'll be fine? This is something I knew was coming. I just thought it was coming less . . . emphatically."

"Master," said Witch, which was something she only ever did when he was doing something she particularly didn't like.

"It's Chosen One stuff," he said. " - what?"

"That explains why Yoda came up," said Witch. "He's going to want to talk to you."

"Everyone is," he said, as he settled back down.

 

There had been a Chosen One, in some form or another, active in the galaxy for eight billion years. Never mind civilizations: there were entire star systems younger than his lineage. Not much of that fit inside a human skull, but fortunately, it didn't have to. The Force had it all. He just needed to learn how to access it, if and when it was necessary.

Or, in more proximal terms: he had a lot of dead older siblings to meet.

He wasn't entirely sure how long it took. The Force didn't much care about time. He floated, buoyed up by the love of relatives who'd lived and died long before his birth, who he was never going to meet except in terms of descendants so far removed that they'd actually evolved into different species in the meantime. He felt the moment, near the end, when the Father stopped holding on and the whole long line of them reshuffled to welcome him home. And then, as one, they turned and shoved him out so he could go fulfill his purpose.

 

He woke up to the bright sunlight of a morning on Tatooine, and this made no sense because he was on the _Gravity_. He opened his eyes to find that someone had set up a golden-yellow UV lamp, which at least explained the sunlight, and also that the someone was Obi-wan. "Hey," he said.

Tried to say. His voice was hoarse with disuse, which suggested more time than he thought.

Obi-wan looked over the edge of his book - actual book, too, with paper and ink - saw that he was awake, and folded the book closed. "Welcome back," he said. "I'll get you some water."

"How long was I out?"

"Oh, just a month this time." Obi-wan said it lightly, but he still winced. These days, he tried to avoid comas without better warning. "Are you going to tell anyone what that was? Chosen One stuff does not count as an explanation. Especially for something that can make Yoda collapse."

He sat up in alarm. "He _collapsed_? Is he all right?"

"Not . . . really," said Obi-wan, looking at the door. "He's fighting, but it's only managed to slow his decline. We. Yaddle thinks he isn't going to recover."

"Oh."

"So if you learned some kind of special Dark healing technique, now would be the time."

"No," he said, softly. "I could do the soul-trapped-in-a-rotting-corpse thing, but. You can't heal with the Dark." Which Obi-wan knew, by now. "I'll do something else. Please get the Council up here. And Dooku. And Padmé."

Obi-wan looked at him in surprise. He still hadn't forgiven Dooku, and wasn't going to until the man admitted all the mistakes he'd made and began trying to fix the ones it was possible to fix. There were just some things were more important than grudges, and this was one of them. "Done."

"Meanwhile I am going to take a shower. And then eat something."

"Drink," said Obi-wan. "Witch made soup."

"Oh. Good."

In point of fact he couldn't stand up on his own for a full dozen minutes, while his arms and legs woke up and protested this fact vociferously. The pins-and-needles went away while he washed and considered that his hair was too long, again, and needed cutting. Padmé and Witch and Rex had arrived by the time he left the 'fresher. They chatted while he strapped on his armor.

"A month," said Padmé. "What was that?"

"I'll explain once everyone is here," he said, cinching the harness tight. "This is one of those times when _I_ didn't do it; I was just getting dragged along in someone else's wake."

"So Mortis," said Rex, coming forward to help him with the front and back plates.

"Ah?" asked Witch.

"Well, he doesn't get dragged along in other people's wakes. It's always his home-grown weird. The only time it isn't is when it's Mortis. It is, right, vod?"

"It is," he allowed, snapping on his shin guards.

"So are you another twenty years older now?" asked Rex.

"Mm," he said. "Thanks, vod," he added, finishing with his vambraces and gauntlets, and flexing his fingers a little to get the gloves to seat properly.

"That's not a 'no,'" observed Padmé.

"I'm not older," he reassured her. "I'm not about to go drag the galaxy off the path to the bad future. I just got some perspective. Additional perspective. It was not much fun."

"Then it must have been useful," said Witch, and handed him a thermos. "Here. You have to finish the whole thing."

He sighed, but took it and opened it a little to get a hint. It was mushroom-barley, fortified with vegetables. His stomach took the opportunity to inform him that he was ravenous. He carefully tipped the thermos up, expecting the liquid to be just shy of boiling. He was not disappointed.

"So," he said. "What's happened while I was out?"

"Nothing much. There's an alpha of the new Constitution on the 'Nets, but the media ripped it to shreds within the first half-hour. No problems on that front."

"The kids?"

"Winama and Qui-gon commed to see if they should come home, but I told them not to bother. Shmi . . . "

The twins together had never been half as much trouble as Shmi on her own. "She took R2?"

Padmé nodded.

"The she's fine. Don't say it, Obi-wan."

Obi-wan sighed. "And the Council is en route."

"Then we should go to the hangar and wait for them."

By the time they got to the hangar the Council ship was already on final approach, and it was only a few minutes of waiting. Howler was first out of the shuttle, and he made a beeline for Padmé. Next were Windu and Koon, who mostly liked him, and then Piell and Rancisis, who mostly didn't. He missed the next few because Windu said, "So?"

"So Yaddle is probably right," he said. "But, as long as Yoda learned the things he went to Moraband and Dagobah to learn, it will be fine."

"And if he didn't?"

"Then it will still be fine. It's just a less optimal outcome."

"Uh-huh. Are you, at any point, going to stop being a drama queen?"

He smiled, the soft genuinely amused one that Windu summoned so easily. "Ask me again later," he said, and then turned to Dooku.

The man looked _old_. Certainly, he hadn't been a young man even before the Clone Wars, but human standard was twelve decades now and getting higher with each new medical advance. Dooku shouldn't look even half this bad. On the other hand, he supposed, suffering the kind of defeat he had - not just temporal, but philosophical - could do that to a man.

"Dooku," he said.

"Naberrie," said Dooku. "Why am I here?"

"Because Yoda is going to die soon," he said, "and all your other failings aside, you are still his padawan." It was his right and duty to burn the body. If there ended up being a body to burn.

"Oh," said Dooku, deflating even more, if that were possible.

"Your attention please," he said, addressing the milling assembly. "We are not here to save Yoda's life; he is now the definition of outlier for Dhazeise lifespan, and has been for at least eighty years. We are here to bear witness to one of the greatest masters the Light has ever seen as he passes into the Force."

"And he's doing it _here_?" asked Piell. Demanded, really.

"He was up here to keep an eye on me when he collapsed; after that, he couldn't be moved." As you already know, he didn't say. "If I'd been conscious at the time - but I wasn't. Let's not waste time on might-have-beens. Let's respect him now, and then honor his memory."

Rancisis made a gesture which translated roughly as, 'lead on,' and also, 'I'm watching you.'

He led on. It was him and the Council, of course, but also Padmé and Rex and Witch. They were joined on the way by Diamond, who hadn't been on ship a month ago and had probably risked being smeared all over hyperspace to get back fast enough. They arrived in medical to find one of the orderlies watching Yoda, and also Kix. They both looked up.

"It's time?" asked Kix.

"Yeah," he said.

Kix nodded, and then firmly directed the protesting orderly out of the room.

Yoda looked tiny. Well, he'd always been tiny, always, but somehow in person he was bigger than mere size would suggest. Except now, with his fragile bones showing beneath paper-thin skin. Right, he thought, grimly, as the rest of the Council shuffled in behind him.

"Yoda," he said, striding over to the bed.

Yoda's eyes opened, soft and brown, and it was only with visible effort that they were able to focus on him. The old master took a breath.

"Don't," he said. "Save your breath. Just listen." Yoda gratefully closed his eyes; he continued. "I'll talk you through it. You've spent the last thirty-odd generations releasing your emotions into the Force, and this isn't that different, really. You just - gather up yourself. All of yourself." Even the parts Yoda would have spent the years since the Naar attempting to correct. "This is everything or nothing, Yoda, and I hope it's everything. Take all the time you need. I'll wait."

He was prepared to, too. But he had hardly finished speaking before Yoda pushed at him. It was gentle - weak - but still clearly with intent, the nonverbal equivalent of, 'Continue.' He smiled, sadly. Of course Yoda knew himself well enough to pack it up just like that. Or, perhaps, he'd been preparing. It wasn't like he could miss the fact that he was dying.

"Everything," he repeated. "I'm not joking, Yoda. Please. Even the parts you don't like."

There was a flash of annoyance, quickly captured and just as quickly released into the Force. Slowly, laboriously, Yoda opened his eyes again. He was lucid, despite the burden of a physical body that was shutting down around him. He knew. He had everything. Even the pain.

"And you give yourself to the Force," he whispered.

Yoda closed his eyes, one final time. There was a sort of inaudible sigh, but no one, not even Howler, missed the moment when Yoda passed into the Force.

Then, stunned silence. Dhazeise had one of the longer natural lifespans, and Yoda had the Force on top of that. Even the Councillors, who knew that all things ended, probably hadn't really believed until that moment that it applied to Yoda. Well. Some of them. Tiin had closed his eyes. Windu was crying, slow tears that left silent tracks on his cheeks. Even Padmé stepped forward to put an arm around him; but he did not move, _could not_ move. Not until -

It wasn't all at once, like a holo snapping off. It was a fading, so slight as to imperceptible at first, but speeding up until the cumulative effects became visible all at once; and then the corpse vanished, leaving nothing but an IV dripping into the hollow in the blankets.

A shocked gasp went around the room. His tension, meanwhile, faded away. It had worked, then.

"Ani, what," asked Padmé.

He turned around. Piell was about to draw his 'saber. Windu just looked old and tired. Dooku - "You know those old créche stories that say Jedi masters who are _really_ in touch with the Force join it completely instead of dying? Soul _and_ body?"

More stunned silence. Obi-wan recovered first. "You _ass_!"

He held up his hands. "I _have_ been visiting dying Jedi. You know I have." Usually for only a few minutes. That's how long it generally took him to find out if the person even could pass into the Force physically. Always before, the answer had been no. "Yoda wouldn't have been able to either, before Dagobah."

"Which you told him to visit," pointed out Gallia.

"Yes, but I can't do that with everyone," he said. "I didn't even do it with Yoda, not really. It was a sliptime vision, and then I had to spend years figuring out which planet had that particular combination of flora and fauna. That's why the Naar gardens. At least to start." More quiet, this time as some of the Councillors who liked him less - Peill and Rancisis - rearranged their worldviews to include the fact that he'd spent the last two decades and change doing his best to ensure that Yoda's death would be as unusual as his life. "Anyway. I've arranged for refreshments in the poetry garden. Whatever the outcome, I knew we'd all need some time to compose ourselves."

"And some poetry?" asked Witch, dry as ever.

"There are writing supplies. It is the _poetry garden_."

The Council took this as the dismissal it was, and Diamond filed out after them. Belatedly he realized that Diamond must have been Yoda's commander, back in the war. Even after they left the room Dooku remained where he stood, stock-still, staring at the small hollow in the rapidly-cooling sheets. He walked over to the man, taking care to make sure his armor clattered. He was still far too close before the other man responded.

"Why am I here, Naberrie?" asked Dooku, not looking at him.

"There was a chance, and not a small one, that it wouldn't work. In this case, I . . . thought you might like some warning. Dead Jedi don't have anything to lose, including sleep. Between the fact that they forget time is a thing and the fact that they're more or less omniscient, they are the most irritating creatures in the universe. You are still Yoda's padawan. I don't think he will be long."

Dooku didn't say anything else, so after a moment he clapped the last remaining Sith on the shoulder and turned to leave the room.

Padmé and Obi-wan and Windu were waiting outside the room. He was really only surprised in that Obi-wan had managed to get Rex _and_ Witch to leave. Then again, Rex and Witch. He said, "Windu."

"Is it likely that there is a planet - or a few planets - that are the right ones for them to visit to . . . connect with the Force? Be able to do," he lifted his chin in gesture at the door, "that?"

"I have no idea," he said. "Why?"

"Because if it is, it might explain why every Force-sensitive in that room now has a shatterpoint that is reading, very loudly, as a planet. Or a few planets."

"Ah," he said.

"Except you," Windu added.

"I suspect I can find out if I go into a trance meditation, but - "

"No," said Padmé.

" - I have been forbidden by my wife. And you have questions."

"Which you are actually going to answer, for once?" asked Obi-wan, broadcasting fond amusement. "Drama queen."

"Well. There are some facts I want the Jedi to know now. About what it was that sent me into a coma, and then, later - "

"A second violent disturbance in the Force in a month," said Windu. "Strong enough to . . . "

"If it helps any," he said, "I think it's like lightning and forest fires. The one can cause the other, but not in a green, wet forest. He was old, Windu. If it wasn't that, it would have been something else."

"He has been handing off his responsibilities for years now," said Obi-wan gently.

"Yeah," said Windu. "I. Poetry sounds just about perfect, right now. But then questions."

"Of course," he said.

 

They didn't reconvene for questions immediately, though. He went with Padmé to their suite and sat down and said, "I, um. I'm not quite sure how to tell you this. Even though I thought I'd be doing it years ago."

"Ani," said Padmé. "Empathy."

He nodded and did, and on her end it was all loving concern and burning curiosity. That was fine. "So the thing is, between the point when any given Chosen One starts doing the job, and the point when they hand the job off to the _next_ one, we don't . . . we almost don't age."

"How almost is almost?" she asked. He was impressed; her emotions were a tangled jumble, love and concern and confusion and belief that wanted to be disbelief. Other things. It's not like no one had picked up on how remarkably youthful he still looked. It just wasn't late enough days, yet, that anyone thought anything more of it than Force-driven longevity. Which it was.

"The Father, when he died, was sixty years short of twenty-six thousand years old."

"Oh," said Padmé. "And you?"

"I have no idea," he said. "I'm physically younger than he was when he started; I probably have forty, forty-five thousand years in me. But I don't . . . I'm going to try something different. Which will still, probably, take a few hundred years." He looked away. "Sorry."

There was a pause. "Why are you apologizing?"

"For . . . not telling you before?"

"That's the right thing to be apologizing for, at least," said Padmé. "And I can see why you didn't. Still . . . "

"I should have told you."

"You should have told me."

Padmé sighed. "What are you planning to do?"

"Usually, a new Chosen One is born when the previous one starts not doing the job. Either because they're unable, like the Father, or because they're unwilling. It's related to probability skew. I'm going to find out how to cause the same kind of probability skew without putting the galaxy in danger, and then I'm going to start finding my little siblings until I get to one who _wants the job_. I didn't get a choice, but people should. They used to. There just have to be more candidates."

"And then you're going to hand if off."

"Yes."

"And then you're going to die."

"Ish," he said. "Join the Force, anyway."

"Like Yoda did."

He nodded.

Padmé took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. "Okay. Good plan. We're telling the children."

"Now?"

" . . . after the wedding," said Padmé. "You're lucky I love you."

"I know," he said. It wasn't a new thing, but he was grateful beyond words that it was still so true.

"And now we're going to tell the Jedi about this?"

"Some of it. I don't want to . . . get anyone's hopes up." Including his own. "I'll tell them some other truths."

"You could have just said no," said Padmé.

"Hmm?"

"To Windu," said Padmé.

It took him a moment to get the joke, and then he smiled.

 

The poetry garden was often used for diplomatic visits. People found the austere simplicity soothing, and the view of the planet was brilliant. Most of the people who'd come up to witness Yoda's passing had composed short cantos in the chuhong or related styles. Shaak Ti had opted for flower arranging. Even now, days later, everyone was quiet, grieving in their own ways. Well, almost. Witch had never much liked Yoda, but she'd made tea and was passing it around in silence, which for her was polite.

They looked up when he sat down, armor plates clattering gently against one another, and leaned forward to take a mug from the tray. He inhaled the aroma and took an appreciative sip before saying, "Do not stand by my grave and weep." It was the opening line of one of the more popular funerary readings, especially for Jedi. It took on new meaning when it was literal, though. He allowed his lips to quirk up at the corners, just a little. "Of course, at some point, he's going to finish actualizing, and then you'll _wish_ he were."

He took a second sip, while six people started talking at once. Previously, the way they'd gotten around this was Yoda banging his cane. That wasn't going to work anymore, so he thought it best that they get over it now, before they had a chance to argue like that in public. He continued to sip tea while he serenely waited for them to stop bickering. Howler, who was a lot cleverer than many gave him credit for, noticed him doing it; he winked. Howler blinked slowly, an anx smile.

It took a while for the Councillors to sort themselves. Shaak Ti had waited it out, like him. Piell shot question after question, and became more infuriated with the lack of answers each time. Windu attempted to shout Piell down, and when this didn't work, physically reached over to put a hand on his shoulder. Rancisis was too canny to engage like that, but had definitely noticed his exchange with Howler. Kolar objected briefly, but when he saw this wasn't going to do anything, he shut up. Billaba followed his lead. It really didn't take all that long after the initial outburst.

Once they were quiet again, he said, "Once again, Piell, I am compelled to offer instruction on how to Float properly."

Piell glared murderous daggers at him, but settled back to begin releasing his anger. There was a lot of it; Piell was hot-tempered when it came to him.

"Wishing Yoda were dead," mused Obi-wan. "I don't. I don't think any of us ever will."

"That's because you've never had a living spirit following you around," he said. "The _other_ old stories about Jedi masters passing into the Force are also true."

"What, ghosts?" asked Billaba. She didn't sound particularly disbelieving. Then again, if he remembered correctly, she liked ghost stories.

"No. Those are sort of . . . Forced imprints of people, but not the people themselves. I'm talking about the people, as real as you or I. Realer, in a sense. Living spirits don't have the physical to cloud their understanding. Of course, it also means they have trouble, often, with remembering the physical. So this is your official warning: when glowing blue Yoda shows up, either in your rooms or in your dreams, don't be alarmed. He does that. _Constantly_."

"And the reason you never told us about this before?" asked Windu.

He projected his amusement. "Because talking about having conversations with dead people makes me sound so much more sane."

"Naberrie," said Billaba, stiffly.

" . . . and because at the time I thought my insanity had just progressed to the auditory-and-visual-hallucinations stage," he said. "I didn't learn differently until after Ventress got back from her first walkabout."

"Oh," said Billaba.

"But you didn't tell us then, either," said .

He shrugged. "Proof. I've been, since then, visiting dying Jedi. This is not a skill I can teach, and I only nominally knew where the teachers for Yoda were." He looked over to Windu.

Windu sighed, and said, "You don't have any."

"No."

" _Why_ don't you have any?"

"It works somewhat differently for Chosen Ones," he said. "I knew how to do it as soon as I became aware that it was possible at all."

Windu blinked, but it was Piell who said, "And how many Chosen Ones are there?"

"Currently? Just me."

"Ah-huh," said Howler.

They'd caught on years ago to the fact that, while he never lied, he didn't offer information either. They were perfectly aware he wasn't telling them something. They just didn't know the right question to ask.

They still hadn't caught on to the fact that if they asked what the right question was, he'd tell them. Even Padmé, though she wouldn't have because for her, he did volunteer information.

"How many Chosen Ones _were_ there?" asked Rancisis.

"Ever?" he asked.

" . . . sure," said Kolar. "Ever."

"Twenty-four million, sixty-two thousand, nine hundred seventy nine," he said, then blinked. "Really? That seems too high."

"Too high," said Witch flatly.

"The Force has become unbalanced twenty-four _million_ times?" said Piell tightly. "Since . . . when?"

"Since intelligent life first evolved in this galaxy," he said. "Eight billion years, give or take. That number is too high by two orders of magnitude. I need to go ask someone about that. Later, though."

"Eight billion," said Kolar, consideringly. "And you think there should have been around two hundred thousand Chosen Ones in that period, so . . . the Force goes out of balance every forty thousand years? Am I getting that right?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Okay," said Windu. "Great. Next question: how do you know?"

"I _just_ woke up from the coma," he said. "Literally two hours ago."

"Oh," said Billaba. "Why - what happened? That made you go into it? Because you've been building the Naar for twenty years, so it's not . . . unless you're not doing it fast enough?"

"No," he said, sipping tea. "The Father was dying. Actually he left it a bit too long; we could have done this with eight months of dreams, but he didn't think I'd go back to Mortis." He let his disgust show in his voice. He hadn't liked the place much, but the duty was the duty. He'd have done it, if the Father had bothered to call. "Then had to shove it into my head all at once, which resulted in probably millions unnecessary passings. Including Yoda's."

"Millions?"

"Not every Force-sensitive is Jedi. Or even Naar. There are plenty of clans mourning the losses of their elders right now."

There was a clatter as Witch stood up too quickly, and jostled the tea tray. She left the room without a word. A moment later, Obi-wan got up to follow her.

"What?" said Gallia.

"Her great-aunt is very probably amongst those dead," he said calmly. "She might not have liked the old woman much, but . . . family is family. She just has to go attend a funeral."

"Oh," said Rex.

"So," said Howler, "telling this in order: the Father was dying, and knew it, and had something he felt you needed to know. He Forced it into you, which sent you into a coma, and then he died, which made Master Yoda collapse. And others. Yoda held on long enough for you to recover, and then you talked him through joining the Force in a quite unusual way. Although that was in some part due to work you did over the last two decades. Have I got it right so far?"

"Mostly. Joining the Force as a living spirit is only unusual recently. It was the norm as little eight thousand years ago."

Howler accepted this with a nod. "Part of what the Father gave you was, I guess you'd call, historical records? Of Chosen Ones in this galaxy. You have access to it but haven't examined it all yet, or you wouldn't have been surprised by that two million." The senator paused, so he nodded. "Very good. Then my question for you is: was the Father a Chosen One?"

"Yes."

A ripple went around the room. Howler persisted. "Was the Father responsible for rebalancing the Force the last time it went out of balance?"

"Yes."

"Forty thousand years ago?" objected Piell.

"Twenty-six thousand," he said. "Yes." He took a sip of tea.

"So then," said Kolar, quickly, before Piell could jump in. "How long do Chosen Ones live?"

"Depends on the individual," he said.

"But on average," said Windu, "between four and forty thousand years."

There was no help for it. "Yes."

"And you?" asked Ti gently.

"As soon as there's an appropriate person, I'll hand the duty off," he said.

"That's not an answer," scoffed Piell.

"I don't know the real answer. I'm only very rarely precognitive, and this isn't one of those times. As small a time as I can manage, while still doing the job well and handing it off to someone who is likely to continue doing it well."

"Okay," said Windu. "Why?"

"Because otherwise I'm likely to outlive my wife by _tens of thousands of years_ ," he snapped, and then took a deep breath and a sip of tea and made his eyes stop glowing before he continued. "The longest-lived Chosen One lasted eleven million years, and there was, at one point, a system for doing this and then passing it off every," he stopped to do the calculations, "six hundred eighty-eight years. It lasted for forty-two million years." He let that sink in. "Current records go back seven thousand years _at best_. Can you imagine the kinds of things a society with millions of years of technology under their belts could do? Because one of the things they did, regularly, was disassemble stars. And then build other stars from the parts. Compared to that, we - our entire civilization - is just children playing with sticks in the mud.

"I'm going to restore that. I know it's achievable, and I can actually ask people who lived at that time how it worked. I can ask the people who founded that system how they did it. Once it's working, I'm going to pass the duty on. It's not good for someone to outlive their time by so long, and I . . . can live without Padmé." He looked over to her, and smiled. "I've done it before. I just _refuse_ to, for a moment longer than is actually necessary."

"Attachment," said Piell.

"Yes, and I'm also going to outlive your whinging," he said, staring at him unblinking until Piell looked away. "So! Any questions?"

"How many people are there who . . . could be Chosen Ones?" asked Ti. "Is that the right way to put it?"

His lips quirked. It appeared that they'd finally gotten the hang of looking for the right question. "Twenty-six," he said.

"Are they all . . . " Tiin gestured to him. "Like you?"

"One would hope not," said Padmé demurely.

He huffed a breath of laughter. "No. I am absolutely unique."

"Thank the Force for that," said Rex. "How do people get to be, ah, potential Chosen Ones?"

"Probability skew, and the Force," he replied promptly. "It's something I was born with, because the Force went around messing with my genes when I was still a cell and another cell that was going to fertilize it. Although why those two cells, specifically? I suspect candidates are born in places that . . . are likely to place them in the way of specific events, assuming things go a certain way, but again. No precognition. If I wanted to I could go track down all the other people and we could spend time searching their pasts for near-misses, but I'm not going to ruin their lives like that."

Howler said, "If they come to you?"

He blinked as he realized some things. "Some already have. I'm going to continue to train them as Naar, and under no circumstances tell them about might-have-beens."

"Wise," said Ti. "Really. Aside from your atrocious habit of sitting on secrets, I don't see what else we have to do here."

"I do," said Windu. "He," he pointed his chin, "doesn't have a shatterpoint on him, because when it's time he's going to join the Force whole. Everyone else who was standing in that room - Howler and Amidala and that, uh - "

"Diamond," he supplied.

" _That_ was Diamond?" asked Tiin, surprised.

" - anyway. The non-Force-sensitives aside, as soon as it happened, everyone picked up a shatterpoint," said Windu. "Ti, you have to go to Naberrie."

"Um?" he said.

"The planet," clarified Windu.

"Oh," said Ti. "And you think - "

"It's as good a guess as any, isn't it?" asked Windu. "If we start now, we can find out if I'm right in - "

"The next few years, I believe," said Rancisis. Everyone turned to him. He wasn't frail, not like Yoda had been at the end, but he wasn't young. He preempted any further discussion by saying, "Where must I go, Master Windu?"

"Thisspias," said Windu. "To start. And then . . . Endor? Is there a planet called Endor?"

"It's a moon," he replied absently. Then, when they all turned to look at him, he said, "Second death star. Where I . . . very nearly died." Where a much younger version of him had died, alone and in pain and not knowing why any of it. He hadn't killed the Son for that, but if he'd been thinking at the time he would have.

The meeting dissolved after that, into Windu reading people's shatterpoints and telling them where to go, and then the Council planning out how to be a Council while scattered across the galaxy. Howler sat back and looked at him with an amused purple-grey crest.

"And someone will have to tell Master Kenobi," said Windu.

"Let me guess," he said, before Windu could say it. "Tatooine."

"Jakku," said Windu. " - why Tatooine?"

"Kenobi stayed there, to watch Luke. I know for a fact that he did that when he died." One of Rex's eyebrows went up. "Don't, vod; I thought it was a trick. Well, it was, but not in the way I thought." He sighed. "Just. If it's Jakku now . . . it has to be a desert?"

"I don't know," said Windu. "Do you think it's important?"

"You're not going to live forever," he said.

"Ah."

"We'll check. It can't just be that it's a desert: there are closer ones. Something about Jakku particularly, or Tatooine before the Hutt War." He mused about it a moment more.

Rex said, "All right. I'll ask Obi-wan if he minds being our negative test case, and then if he doesn't, we'll go to Jakku and," he smiled, "have some fun."

" _After_ the wedding," said Padmé.

"Of course after the wedding," said Rex. "No one is missing the wedding. Now, if you don't mind, I think I have to go catch the _Banshee_."

"Go on then," said Padmé, smiling.

"Well, then," he said, and pitched his voice a little louder. "Councillors, you're always welcome to stay as long as you like, but informally: show's over, get off my ship."

"Getting!" assured Billaba.

"Can I stay for a spar, at least?" asked Windu.

"I'd like that," he said.

 

Four days later he got a comm from Dooku. It read:

How do you get him to stop?

**Author's Note:**

> The answer is: You don't. He just follows you around offering unwanted advice and/or commentary on your life. _Forever_.
> 
> The alternate title for this one is, 'tanarill's answer to the Fermi Paradox (in Star Wars Land).'
> 
> As usual, if things are ungrammatical, or I missed a typo, or you don't understand all the math, please prod me.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Apprentice Returns Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12466900) by [BarbaraFett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarbaraFett/pseuds/BarbaraFett)
  * [Transition States [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054734) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




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